Columnist Susan Snyder: Reminder: Today is Nevada Day

Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 | 10:11 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

It's Nevada Day.

Try to restrain your glee.

For some people this means a day off. For the rest of us poor schmos, it means we probably know people who have the day off. We hate them, and we hope it rains.

But hang in there for a minute while we duly indoctrinate the valley's newcomers with a Reader's Digest explanation of why they cannot register their cars today. Today we celebrate Nevada becoming a state on Oct. 31, 1864.

Hey, it could be worse. If we'd been signed into statehood on April Fools' Day no telling what could have happened. We might have been Utah.

Anyway, the Union was still reeling from having its heinie kicked at Gettysburg in 1863, and the 1864 presidential election was coming up. President Abraham Lincoln needed support and so did the Union, which wanted to show the Confederacy it wasn't licked. That's why the state flag says "Battle Born." Nevada was a Civil-War baby.

Now here in Las Vegas, Nevada Day basically means you can't accomplish anything with the state or local government. So it's no different than any other day. But up in Carson City, they're partying their heads off right now.

Who says? Sen. Richard Bryan, that's who. And he ought to know. The Las Vegas Democrat is grand marshal for this year's Admission Day parade in Carson City.

"I'd rather have that title than 'the state fossil,' " Bryan said during a telephone interview last week.

The state fossil, he says, is the ichthyosaur -- in case you wondered.

Bryan's affinity for Nevada Day is almost legendary. He's a junkie. Next to Thanksgiving, he says it's his favorite holiday.

Maybe that's why Bryan could be dragged off the U.S. Senate floor to sing the state song.

Did too ask him. And Bryan can without hesitation rattle off the first two verses and the refrain of "Home Means Nevada."

No, the state song is not "Danke Schoen."

"I've told my wife when she puts me in a pine box, I want that song played," Bryan said of the official ditty.

The Admission Day grand marshal also knew the state bird is the mountain bluebird (not Liberace), and that the state flower is sagebrush (not "dead").

He had no trouble recalling that the desert bighorn sheep is the state animal (not Mike Tyson), and that the desert tortoise -- not Michael McDonald -- is the state reptile.

Bryan admits Las Vegas is pretty much left in the lurch when it comes to celebrating the big day. But Carson City is the capital, after all. And there wasn't much down here in the state's early days anyhow.

"In 1900 there were only about 13 people in Las Vegas," Bryan said. "Clark County wasn't even part of the state when it started."

We still aren't sure it is.

But things certainly would have been different if we'd been in charge of naming some of the official state stuff. Our state rock could have been concrete instead of sandstone. The state tree might have been an Arizona-grown Mexican fan palm, rather than the bristlecone pine.

And heaven knows what slogan would have ended up on the state flag.

Maybe, "Cash only. No chips."